Somebody on this blog (I tried to look it up and failed) once asked why there are no leftie thrillers being published. Not an idle question, since there are plenty of winger thrillers out there, from Crichton’s last two efforts to the Left Behind series, and the race to foil an Islamist terrorist plot has become such a cliché that you only see it on TV.
It wasn’t always that way; I still remember reading Failsafe and Seven Days in May when I was in high school. The film Syriana provided a nicely cynical alternative viewpoint on the Middle East, at least for me, but I don’t remember seeing it in book form.I suppose that LeCarre has been providing some heft on the leftie side of the thriller ledger, but the yield from American authors has seemed thin of late. I think we should do something about that.
You could argue that what really matters is non-fiction – telling it like it is in the face of the daily hosefull of right wing lies and spin. We call ourselves the reality-based community and every book that tries to punch through the mirages and identify reality is certainly a victory for us. But fiction is an important part of culture. (I mean honest fiction, not what O’Reilly writes.) Fiction is where we tell the stories about what is supposed to matter, how we want people to make choices, and all the better if the choices are difficult. Fiction is where we explore the personal consequences of very bad choices, our own or those of someone in power. People remember fiction because they can get into the story in a way that isn’t possible with non-fiction. Fiction is all about that terrible word, ‘values.’ It’s also generally more fun to read, of course.
Well, I am about to try to nudge the balance in the opposite direction, but I need some help. I have written a novel entitled The Wrong God, in which the bad guy is a powerful winger who wants to lead the US into an all-out religious war. I need to find an agent to help me sell this book. Unfortunately, the world of agents and editors works very much on connections, and I don’t have any hooks into that world yet. Anybody here know an agent who might be interested?